EVERYBODY IS CRYING
Tears, tears, and more tears
Welcome to Top Chef, Not Top Scallop, the world’s greatest Top Chef recap blog. This is a review of Top Chef: Portland, episode 11. My name is Randall Colburn and I am going to make fun of Richard Blais a lot. Read last week’s recap here and my recap of the LCK finale here.
Last week, I shared a funny GIF of Shota and Gail exchanging a knowing nod after he served up a Quickfire dish topped with crunchy beans. It was funny (and a bit jarring) because it spoke to some unseen history between the two, a bond strengthened by his use of crunchy beans. I had a similarly jarring reaction at the end of tonight’s episode when an exhausted Maria leaned into Gabe and tearily told him he was her “mentor” this season. It was a lovely moment between the two, but also a surprising one. Their Spanish patter in the kitchen revealed a shared comfort, but beyond that I can’t recall any scenes of culinary bonding between the two or even a team challenge where they merged their approaches to Mexican cuisine. (I kinda wanna go back and watch with her “mentor” comment in mind.)
The point is that, even in a COVID bubble, there’s so much we don’t see. Why, for example, did Sara harbor so much resentment for Chris in Last Chance Kitchen? And what, pray tell, prompted Shota and Gabe to call themselves the “thirsty boys”? We’ll never know. What we do know is that people are starting to snap. It happens every season, but the psychic damage of masking and quarantining and waiters in face shields, of restaurant closures and laborious take-out and delivery procedures, has exacerbated what’s already a draining process. The end-of-season visits from family are meant to fill the cup of exhausted contestants; these letters from home, however, are just reminders of how far away they truly are. Of course everybody is crying.
Maria’s been inching towards the end of her rope for a while now. Not only does she miss her wife and son, but the insecurity she feels regarding her lack of professional training perseveres, despite her Sonoran cuisine having toppled no shortage of Fine Dining chefs. She brings it up again as she sips wine with the chefs and waits for the axe to fall, and I imagine that vulnerability is what prompted Jamie to try and take the fall for Maria, to give her the second chance she got via LCK. It’s an awkward gesture, though. Well-intentioned, sure, but Maria had made her peace with going home and, frankly, I wouldn’t want the charity, either, especially since Jamie frames it as a way for Maria to boost her confidence. That’s just kind of pathetic.
It doesn’t make Jamie look good in front of the judges, either. Tom wants chefs to want it, and he’s got a history of getting visibly annoyed when contestants imply one of their competitors deserves it more than they do. But I think Tom and Padma could also tell that Jamie’s plea was a halfhearted one. Historically, the franchise will allow chefs to sacrifice themselves for two reasons:
If someone is clearly struggling physically/mentally/emotionally and wouldn’t be able to compete in healthy fashion. See: Nelson, who bowed out of this season’s LCK due to his busted knee. Or Mia in season two, who was clearly unhappy in the environment.
This is rare, but if someone really fucked up and wants to give up their immunity. See: Jamie in Charleston. (Or Seattle, when the judges basically tried to bully Nick into giving up his immunity.)
Jamie didn’t deserve to go home, and her gesture was one of flailing, misguided love. Tom was never going to let it happen, even if Maria was willing to take her up on it.
Anyways…
Quickfire
Gotta be honest: Not a fan of Top Chef: France’s “infamous Black Box challenge,” which is just way too Gordon Ramsey for my taste. Sitting in the dark, picking at some fancy food with your disgusting fingers, then trying to recreate it as Dr. Claw watches from the wings?
I dunno, man. Save it for Hell’s Kitchen.
I see the appeal, though: It’s a more active variation of the taste test challenge that also folds in a Top Chef staple: the mise en place relay race. You use your senses to identify not just ingredients, but components. That’s hard! Especially when Dr. Claw gives you a dang pigeon with gribiche (a French egg sauce).
The actual dish: a grilled squab with roasted carrots, grilled pear marinade, carrot mustard, and gribiche
It works like this:
Chefs split into teams of two. Here we have Shota and Gabe, Maria and Jamie, and Dawn and Brooke Williamson, who debuted during last week’s LCK finale. Dawn was granted Brooke as a partner because she has the most individual wins thus far.
One member of the team exits the kitchen while the other has 15 minutes to go into the pitch-black box, fiddle with the food, and get their recreation going.
After those 15 minutes, the second member of the team has 15 more minutes to spend some time in the box, see what their partner was up to, and carry out the dish.
After those 15 minutes, the lights turn on in the box and both chefs have five minutes to correct any mistakes.
Maria and Jamie struggle the most, specifically Maria, who mistakes the dish’s carrot mustard puree for a curry and absolutely butchers the squab. Shota, too, makes a few key mistakes early on, having become convinced (maybe by the pistachios?) that there’s a second protein and grabbing a superfluous beef shank. Shota does, however, focus on mise en place instead of any actual cooking, lest Gabe miss that he’s got something on the burner. That’s exactly what happens when Dawn steps in for Brooke.
Maria and Jamie’s dish ends up being a far cry from the original, but Gabe and Shota and Dawn and Brooke deliver solid approximations. It’s the latter team that pleases Dr. Claw (otherwise known as Portland chef Gabriel Rucker), much to the chagrin of Shota and Gabe, who share this look:
Withering.
Elimination Challenge
Back at the Top Chef compound, Kristen and Brooke meet the final five chefs with care packages of ingredients curated by their loved ones. That’s a neat wrinkle, having the family pack the boxes, and it provides some glimpses into the way food operates in the chefs’ personal lives. Maria’s box, for example, wasn’t tailored to her talents so much as what she and her family enjoy at home, including chicken wings, her son’s favorite food.
Jamie also gets chicken wings, though the dread specter of that rubber chicken looms:
Jamie to the next rubber chicken she sees:
Personally, I preferred this to having the chefs’ families actually present, though that’s probably because I’m still scarred by Blais tongue-kissing his wife in the first All-Stars season. In all seriousness, though, I just tend to dislike the challenges where the wives and dads are forced to be sous chefs, which usually results in the chefs having to dumb down their recipes in ways that can get extremely frustrating. Also, the judges can’t be sharp-tongued bitches at the table when the parents are right there.
I found it moving how, in this pandemic-shrouded season, Shota’s connection to his dad came in the persimmons he packed in the box. Or how the matzo ball soup in Jamie’s box revealed she and her family’s love for Jewish restaurants. Gabe’s wife gave him all the ingredients he’d need to make the first dish his mother ever taught him to cook. (A shrewd move, that; they’re clearly Top Chef fans.)
Also, why is Gabe’s kid sending him drawings of Ronald McDonald?
Anyways, the challenge is to make something from the ingredients in these boxes, though the chefs don’t need to use every ingredient.
Here’s who made Tom make this happy face:
Dawn’s pork belly with pecan caramel, collards, sweet potato, and red eye gravy
Melissa: I think Dawn’s really shown us her food in this plate. She’s really trying to modernize Southern cuisine and show off her techniques.”
Kwame: “This is like a Michelin star cookout for me. I love that pecan caramel around it. I think ‘Dawn for president’.”
(Unfortunately, Dawn’s scatterbrains are interfering with her incredible food. In this challenge, she forgets to gravy up a handful of plates, pretty much disqualifying her from a win. Thankfully, Tom is here with some words of encouragement.)
Tom: “Get your head on straight, ‘cause your food is really good.”
Shota’s miso marinated wagyu with persimmon puree
Shota: “I’m doing this for my dad.”
Gregory: “It’s light, it’s creamy. It has so much umami.”
Kristen: “Visually, I thought it was absolutely stunning.”
Brooke: “I really loved the pressed persimmon with the smokiness of the bonito in there. And I loved the fact that he made the matsutake mushrooms into a puree.”
Gail: “You showed us an incredibly elevated and sophisticated side of these flavors from home and it showed us who you are as a cook.”
Ed: “It was a perfect bite, it was really lovely. He’s not going to give you flavor bombs every time. Everything he does is very delicate and elegant. I thought it showed him beautifully.”
(Okay, calm down, Ed, you just got here.)
Gabe’s panuchos with braised pork, kale, and pickled red onion
Gregory: “It’s so different.”
Dale: “I think this is Gabe’s best dish this whole season.”
Melissa: “Gabe really showed us where home is for him.”
Tom: “What Gabe did here, you don’t see it happening frequently: where you can take a dish from the street and dress it up and not lose its soul.”
Dale: “He’s cooking to win. Lights out. This is lights out.”
Padma: “What I loved most was that you were able to take this beloved street food and turn it into art.”
Tom: “I like where your head’s at right now, that you’re willing to take that kind of risk late in the game. It shows confidence.”
Gabe wins! And he didn’t even need to make the dish his wife was teeing him up to cook. The man’s got ideas for days.
And the losers:
Jamie’s thịt kho braised brisket, caramelized Thai chili jus, and pickled cucumber
Jamie: “I check the rice and it seems dry and weird, but at this point I just need to get something on the plate.”
Gregory: “My piece of brisket was perfectly tender.”
Ed: “I wish there was something a little more done with the cold rice.”
Blais: “It doesn’t scream any one point of view.”
Tom: “If I went to a local Vietnamese restaurant and got this I’d be perfectly satisfied, but five contestants left on Top Chef, who wants it more?
Gail: “That brisket was beautiful, but I think the lack of sauce and the lack of power in those flavors—we just weren’t getting the full Jamie experience today.”
Brooke: “The dish had a lack of purpose and seasoning.”
Tom: “Jamie gave us a piece of braised meat and some aromatics over some white rice and some pickled vegetables. There’s really nothing to that.”
Gail: “Jamie had her technique down, but it lacked imagination.”
(How sad was it for her to do her little sounds while clearly being very sad about being on the bottom? It’s like when somebody cries while wearing a Halloween costume.)
Maria’s grilled wing with miso and ginger and bean sprout salad with tequila-cilantro vinaigrette
Gail: “These flavors were really refreshing from Maria because they didn’t feel like all the food we’ve gotten from her before.”
Padma: “I actually liked the marinade. I was licking my fingers.”
Tom: “There’s a ton of flavor here, but the sauce isn’t cooked in with it.”
Kwame: “There’s no acid in this salad at all.”
Brooke: “I think the bean sprouts and the cabbage watered down the vinaigrette.”
Gail: “Maria’s did feel like she had just tossed boiled wings in a great sauce.”
Kristen: “It was the salad that was the worst offense for me. She started overthinking in the sense of doing it for her family but then she lost sight of how to actually cook.”
There’s an interesting contrast with Gabe and Maria here. Gabe was given the ingredients to make a dish indebted to his family, but instead chose to go another, less emotional route. His dish came from a distance, and he was able to approach it like he would any recipe. Would that have been true had he made the dish his mother taught him to cook? Maybe, maybe not. What works at home doesn’t always work for the judges. One of the critiques of Maria’s dish was that she was too beholden to certain ingredients—the bean sprouts in her salad, specifically—because of the place they have on her family’s dinner table. Top Chef encourages personal connections and food that means something, but at the end of the day it’s always about what tastes the best. I think of Kiki, who was at a place in her career where she couldn’t distinguish between the personal and the professional. Gabe, meanwhile, seems very good at that.
Final three’s gonna be Gabe, Shota, and Dawn, yeah? Love Jamie, but I think she’s out in a blaze of glory next week.
Scraps
I thought Jamie was doomed when she said she’d never used a pressure cooker in her life. Pressure cooker’s almost always spell doom on TC.
Blais: “I’m gonna put this on my Pinterest.” NOBODY USES PINTEREST ANYMORE, YOU ROBOT.
Next time on Top Chef: Somebody doesn’t get “a crispy guy.”
Thought it was weird that Jamie was so into giving Maria a second chance, but not Byron.